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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145100">everyone's trying to dig your grave</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/loherangrin/pseuds/loherangrin'>loherangrin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stranger Things (TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, complicated family relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:43:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>850</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145100</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/loherangrin/pseuds/loherangrin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy Hargrove disappears on the morning of July 4th, 1986, a year after the events at Starcourt.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Billy Hargrove &amp; Maxine "Max" Mayfield</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>everyone's trying to dig your grave</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>do I have any idea where this came from? nope. (<s>did I ever watch season 3?? also no</s>) will I indulge myself and write it anyway? yesss.</p>
<p>title comes from Carry On, by The Score</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Billy Hargrove disappears on the morning of July 4<sup>th</sup>, 1986, a year after the events at Starcourt. No one knows anything. No one can explain how, or where he’s gone to, and the last people to have seen him had been the very occupants of the Hargrove-Mayfield household, two-days prior, when he left dinner with a tight, pinched face and slammed the door to his room shut loud enough for Max to flinch.</p>
<p>Dustin thinks it’s the Upside Down again. He gathers Lucas, and then Steve, and Steve calls Robin, who doesn’t want to get involved unless it’s clear it’s that what the whole thing is about. Max, well, Max stares at an empty room, at a vanity made of old crates, mostly empty walls and soft, well worn shirts that stink of cologne ― she stares at the silver medal she found on her window sill and she knows that whatever it is that her friends are searching for in the woods, they won’t find it.</p>
<p>And they don’t. Not for days. Not for weeks. Not for months. And life ― life goes on. No monsters. No Upside Down. Billy Hargrove disappears on the morning of July 4<sup>th</sup>, 1986, and no one seems to care. His father, his father puts up a façade. Even goes to the police to report Billy missing, but Max can see it in the way he stares out the window, sometimes, in the hard line of his mouth whenever the conversation strays, that Neil Hargrove doesn’t care about Billy as much as he cares about what other people must be thinking of them.</p>
<p>Maybe he <em>does</em> miss Billy, though. Maybe he misses someone he can press under his thumb until they wilt, until they break, until all they have left are dead eyes and vitriol. Max wouldn’t know. She never did.</p>
<p>Susan Mayfield, her mom, doesn’t say anything. She asks Max about Billy once, when it’s clear that he’s seemingly not planning on coming back (<em>if he can come back</em>, a part of Max can’t help but to think), but Max has nothing to say, nothing she <em>can</em> say, and mom never asks her again, never talks about him again anywhere Max can hear.</p>
<p>Billy Hargrove disappears on the morning of July 4<sup>th</sup>, 1986, and nothing changes. There are no worried friends knocking on their door to ask about him. None of the gushing girls from school, or even the older women who’d ogle him back when he worked on the pool. He’s just gone, gone with the wind, gone like he was never there, and it’s like nothing has changed at all.</p>
<p>Billy Hargrove disappears on the morning of July 4<sup>th</sup>, 1986, and none of Max’s friends care. They ask her if she’s okay. She says yes to Dustin, who shrugs and lets it go. She says yes to Lucas, whose eyes soften, but who nods anyways, and lets it go. She says nothing to Steve, who takes the silence as enough of an answer, and lets it go. She’s so <em>tired</em> of people letting go, and she’s tired of coming back to a house that’s emptier than it ever was, but what can she say to that? He was an asshole. He threatened her friends. Of course ― <em>of course</em> they wouldn’t care.</p>
<p>Billy Hargrove disappears on the morning of July 4<sup>th</sup>, 1986, and Max has a silver medal with a saint that she’s never prayed to. He was an asshole before. Before Hawkins, back in Cali. Always bitter, always biting, always with the white teeth, shark grin. He was the one who called her Mad Max, who didn’t care for her tomboy ways as long as it didn’t get him in trouble, who told her, <em>that’s not how you do it</em> the first time he saw her fall from her skateboard ― but he was also the one who grabbed her wrist hard enough to hurt, who raised his voice until she shrank away, he was the person whom she had to threaten bodily harm to leave her and her friends alone.</p>
<p>He was the guy who almost died to protect them all, once. Brother. <em>Step</em>brother.</p>
<p>“<em>You were happy</em>”, El had said, then, to bring him back. Were. Were. And Max holds the silver medal to her chest, mind running over and over again the single sincere apology she’s ever gotten from him when everyone thought he’d been about to die ― her and himself included.</p>
<p>I’m sorry. (He made me do it.)</p>
<p>I’m sorry. (You have to believe me, Max.)</p>
<p><em>I’m sorry</em>.</p>
<p>Billy Hargrove disappears on the morning of July 4<sup>th</sup>, 1986, and no one in town misses him. Keg King. Bully. Jerk. Max <em>knows</em> him, she knows what he was, what he is. Billy was an asshole before and he was an asshole after, and he was an asshole in every single moment in between. White teeth, shark grin. Cologne. Unbottoned shirts and cigarette, hair products with names she never cared for.</p>
<p>And Max ― Max doesn’t miss him. She <em>doesn’t</em>.</p>
<p>It’s easier for everyone else like that.</p>
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